Unclear and Present Danger

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “12 Monkeys,” the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer. “12 Monkeys” is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 French short film “La Jetée,” in which scientists in a post-nuclear apocalypse future send a man back and forward through time in an e...

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John were joined by Linda Holmes of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Our to discuss the 1995 political romantic comedy “The American President,” directed by Rob Reiner, written by — you guessed it — Aaron Sorkin, and starring Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, David Paymer, Samantha Mathis and Michael J. Fox, among others. “The American President”...

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John were joined by Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker magazine to watch and discuss 1995’s GoldenEye, the first James Bond film of the 1990s and the first James Bond film of the post-Cold War era. GoldenEye is the seventeenth film in the James Bond series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan, who would go on to star in three subsequent pictures, all of which we...

For this week’s episode, we watched the 1995 coming-of-age tale slash Vietnam War movie slash crime thriller “Dead Presidents,” produced and directed by Albert and Allen Hughes. It stars Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N’Bushe Wright, Freddy Rodriguez and Bokeem Woodbine. “Dead Presidents” is the story of Anthony Curtis, a soon-to-be high school graduate from the Bronx who chooses to join...

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watched Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 cult favorite Strange Days , a collaboration with James Cameron inspired by the political and social turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although not quite “cyberpunk” — it isn’t a William Gibson pastiche like its contemporary Johnny Mnemonic — Strange Days borrows heavily from the genre and its various conceits....

This week, Jamelle and John were joined by scholar and author Sam Goldman to watch and discuss the1994 alt-history thriller “Fatherland,” a made-for-HBO adaptation of Robert Harris’ 1992 novel of the same name. Both the novel and the film take place in a 1964 where Nazi Germany won the war in Europe. In the week leading up to the 75th birthday of Adolf Hitler, and the opening up of diplomatic rela...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by the Josie Duffy Rice of the Unreformed podcast to discuss “The Net,” a 1995 techno-thriller, directed by Irwin Winkler and starring Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam and Dennis Miller. The Net was one of several films in a mini-genre that you can describe as, “What if computer technology was used for evil?” Contempor...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch the satirical sci-fi action thriller “Demolition Man,” starring Sylvester Stallone as “John Spartan,” a Los Angeles city police officer who is cryogenically frozen as punishment for a failed rescue attempt; Wesley Snipes as “Simon Phoenix,” his primary antagonist; Sandra Bullock as a cop in the sterile, Brave New World-es...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by David Sims of The Atlantic magazine and the Blank Check podcast to discuss the 1995 comic book adaptation “Judge Dredd.” Made in the era when Hollywood had no idea what to do with comics and science fiction properties, “Judge Dredd” is, in most respects, a failure. But within that failure is interesting glimpse in...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch “True Lies,” James Cameron’s tonally-incoherent (but hugely successful) spy thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. They discuss the film as a straightforward take on the American crisis of masculinity in the 1990s, as a depiction of American beliefs and ideologies around sex and power, and as the be...

This week on Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “Canadian Bacon,” a 1995 political comedy written, produced and directed by Michael Moore, which takes aim at American politics in the wake of the Cold War. It stars an ensemble cast of John Candy (in his last film role), Alan Alda as the president of the United States, Bill Nunn, Kevin J. O’Connor, Rhea Perlman, Kevin Pollak and Ri...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched “Die Hard with a Vengeance,” the 1995 threequel to the original 1988 “Die Hard.” Directed by John McTiernan, who helmed the first film, it was written by prolific Holllywood screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh based on an original screenplay and stars Bruce Willis as recurring hero John McClane, Samuel L. Jackson as “Zeus,” and Jeremy Ir...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John discuss Wolfgang Petersen’s medical thriller slash action movie “Outbreak.” We spend the bulk of the episode discussing the experience of watching this movie having lived through a pandemic, as well as the pandemic fears of the 1990s that might have inspired this film. Unfortunately, a few technical difficulties meant the audio...

This week, Jamelle and John are joined by Soraya Roberts of Defector and Pipe Wrench magazine to talk “Drop Zone,” a quintessentially 1990s action film starring Wesley Snipes and Gary Busey. They talk Snipes' career and his fall into “sovereign citizenship,” the 90s obsession with “extreme” sports, and race and Hollywood. In our next episode, we’ll discuss the (ridiculous) disaster thriller “Outbr...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watch “Toys,” a largely-forgotten fantasy-comedy film from director Barry Levinson. Despite its myriad flaws, the boys have a productive conversation about the film’s obvious themes — the military-industrial complex and the rise of remote and drone warfare — and its less obvious themes, specifically the bourgeois vision of...

We are concluding our Graham Greene series with an obscure spy drama from director Otto Preminger, the 1979 film "The Human Factor." It is of a piece with "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and to that point, Jamelle and John spend this episode discussing the connections between the two works and the similarities (and differences) between how Le Carre and Greene view betrayal and deception. "The Human Fa...

In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watch Disney’s “The Rocketeer,” a throwback action-adventure film starring Billy Campbell, Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Sorvino and Timothy Dalton. They discuss the 1930s revival of the late 80s and early 90s, the real-life conspiracies that might have inspired the plot of “The Rocketeer,” and the political power of nostalgia for Americans on the lef...

In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John discuss “Without Warning,” a made-for-television science fiction film from 1994, produced as if it were an actual breaking news event, with “reports” from on-the-ground correspondents from around the world. They discuss the inspiration for this “docudrama” genre as well as the general wave of “asteroid attack” films in the 1990s. They also talk the psycholo...

New Episode This week, Jamelle and John are joined by historian Gillet Rosenblith to discuss the 1994 action thriller “Surviving the Game,” a loose adaptation of “The Most Dangerous Game” and a glimpse into anxieties and fears regarding poverty, homelessness and urban decay in the 1990s. They also discuss other, similar films of the era, like John Woo’s “Hard Target,” and they discuss further what...

Happy New Year! In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watch “The Puppet Masters,” an adaptation of a 1951 Robert Heinlein novel that feels aimless in the absence of the original Cold War context. Jamelle and John discuss, among other things, the “Body Snatcher” genre, science fiction as a vehicle for allegory, and the war on drugs. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by...

What do you get when you mix Boston, bad accents and a lot of explosions? The 1994 thriller “Blown Away” starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones! Jamelle and John are joined by Clare Malone of The New Yorker to talk Irish-American identity, Irish nationalism, the racial politics of Boston and much, much more. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck . Contact us! Follow us on Tw...

Hello listeners! This on the Patreon week we continued our journey into the work of Graham Greene and Carol Reed with the 1949 British noir “The Third Man.” It suffices to say that this is one of the most famous and acclaimed movies of all time, so Jamelle and John had a lot to say about its production, its writing and its themes. They also spoke a great deal about Orson Welles, the politics of po...

In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John scrape the bottom of the cinematic barrel with the 1994 environmentalist action flick, “On Deadly Ground,” directed by and starring Steven Seagall. It’s not a good movie, but they had a good conversation covering Seagall’s political trajectory, right-wing misogyny, and the psychological origins of authoritarian politics. Connor Lynch produced this episode....

For this week’s Patreon episode, Jamelle and John cover the 1959 film “Our Man in Havana,” an adaptation of a 1958 Graham Greene novel by the same name. We talk Graham Greene, director Carol Reed, and Alec Guinness, the star, as well as esoteric topics like motivated reasoning, the nature of intelligence work, and the power and peril of propaganda. We also, as always, looked at the news for the da...

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle, John and special guest Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes discuss the 1993 adaptation of John Grisham’s “The Pelican Brief,” and ask whether anything about the movie’s plot actually makes any sense. They also discuss the early days of the conservative legal movement, the political hegemony of capital, and Stanley Tucci. Connor Lynch produ...